Bartimaeus
by St Elmo's Fire
Summary: Rewriting The Amulet of Samarkand for fun and certainly no profit.
1. Chapter 1

Okay, so here's how this story happened.

We read The Amulet of Samarkand, and then the rest. And it gave us this peculiar feeling. Sometimes, you like a book, and sometimes you don't, and sometimes you like half the story and not the other half. But with the Amulet of Samarkand, we liked basically all the story, except that it felt like we'd only got half of it. The setup was great, but the bits we cared about didn't seem like the same ones the author did, and so we kept waiting for the follow-through on them that never came.

So we decided to do what any sane and reasonable people would do: rewrite the book. We basically liked it, but felt it needed more. And while we were there, why not start tweaking things? Plus, it'd be an unusual sort of challenge, and good practice.

To avoid boring you (and to not run any further afoul of copyright law) chapters we're leaving as they are won't be posted. The first chapter, for example, is Bartimaeus and Nate interaction, which we're down with and see no need to improve. We pick up on Chapter Two.

-0-

When I alighted on the top of a lamppost in the London dusk the rain had reached the deeply unpleasant point of sheeting. My luck, it seemed, was remaining constant. I had taken the form of a brilliant white tern with wings edged with blue earlier, not long after the rain began. I had been a lovely deep blue darter for earlier exploration, only for my magnificent wings to get soaked and the wet saturate my essence. Terns are decent enough birds for simple observation, but they, like most of the smaller animals, aren't something you want for flying about - hawks get tiresome. Shifting my feet unhappily on the wet metal, I looked for a more auspicious perch. My options were limited. After a moment, I settled on a large beech tree as my best choice. The branches had long ago been stripped of leaves by the wet November winds, but their thick tangle near the truck would still offer some protection from this rain - more, at least, then I was getting on my present perch. The tern hopped into the air and soared to a large bough, shadow crossing over a lone car that eased along despite the wide and empty suburban street. The ugly off-white facades of looming villas stared out at me from behind their high stone walls and the lingering greenery of their gardens, shining wetly in the dimness like skulls peering out from a moldy, lichen-encrusted crypt.

Well, maybe it was my morbid mood that made it seem so grim. I was bothered by five things. Firstly, a dull ache was already building in my form, the pain that comes with every physical shape I hold. I could feel the pain in my feathers, creeping through my essence like the rain had. Transforming removes the ache, but repeatedly changing form while trying to steal the Amulet would get me caught faster than a baby cobra that had wandered into a mongoose's lair. I wasn't in the mansion yet, though. Making sure nothing saw me, I changed to the form of a hooded crow, a handsome creature with lovely white plumage and a jet-black head and wings, but my essence remained uncomfortably damp.

The second thing bothering me was the downpour. Enough said.

Third, I'd forgotten the limitations of material bodies. I had an itch just above my beak, and kept futilely trying to scratch it with a wing before I remembered and rubbed against the tree trunk instead.

Fourth, that boy. He brought up many perplexing questions. Who was he? Why did he choose such a convoluted method of suicide? How would I get my revenge on him before he got brutally killed? News travels, especially in spirit-heavy areas, and I was sure to take some abuse for scurrying around on behalf of a weakling like him. I remember back in Mesopotamia when a few other spirits and I spent weeks beating up a foliot after we heard he spent most of his time scurrying around to do an apprentice's shopping. Ah, good times.

Fifth...the Amulet. It was a potent charm, able to protect the wearer from even the most powerful magic. But not, I wagered, from a sufficiently pissed off magician. I had no clue why that foolish kid wanted it. If he had such a death wish, surely he could simply have spend things up and poked a toe from the circle? Or maybe he wanted to wear the tacky thing. Perhaps fighting over amulets was the latest craze in London. It would hardly have been the stupidest thing magicians had gotten up to over the years. (There are many contenders, but my personal vote has to be that delightful period in Italy when it was the height of fashion to summon afrits to destroy one's own ancestral home. The massive destruction was only a sidenote for me, honestly - the real humor was in the number of magicians who attempted it after drawing the pentacle drunk and got eaten for their troubles.) Whatever the reason, I had to get it as soon as possible, and it would by no means be easy, even for a great and honorable djinni like myself.

I closed my crow's eyes to avoid distraction and opened my inner ones one at a time, each looking at a different plane (As a high ranking djinni I had access to all seven of the planes. Some insufferable braggart spirits will claim vision into an eighth or ninth or twenty-third plane, but only magicians could be so foolish as to believe something so absurd. After all, plenty of the rest are busy denying the existence of any plane beyond the fourth, which is patently ridiculous. How stupid would you have to be not to believe in entire planes of existence simply because you couldn't see into it yourself?). I peered around, tilting my head. This was a magician's section of town, and quite wealthy (but I repeat myself) so only three of the houses on either side of the street failed to display at least a flicker of magical protection. I ignored most of the glowing barriers and interwoven mental tripwires. It was the one across the street, on the left that I focused on. It was a gaudy, overflowing mess of stories and additions that had half-swallowed much of the grassy area in front under overhanging porches, done in the same sepulchral white. A magician's residence. (Obviously) Lovelace's, to be precise.

This would not be pleasant.

The first plane, as usual, had been clear. The second plane was covered with burning cerulean strands, like a translucent cloth thrown over the house, the edges reaching to drape across the tall fitted stone wall down to the manicured grass outside.

The third and fourth planes, which magicians can also see into, were as clear as the first. Any magician, therefore, would have been unpleasantly surprised by what I, as a noble djinni, could easy see on the fifth - three sentries floating in a circuit, just inside the walls. They were an unpleasant brownish yellow, with three legs arranged in a tripod that rotated endlessly in midair. A thick torso sprouted from the center of the useless legs, with a mouth on either side and a double ring of yellowish brown eyes at the top.

One approached near the edge of the wall on the far right (That is, his left. Humans.), and the crow shifted its body closer against the tree trunk and flattened down. At this distance I would appear as a crow all the way to the seventh plane, of course. It was only when I was closer that more discerning spirits could notice anything amiss on the higher levels. Discerning spirits, though, knew this, and these sentries might be keeping one of their various eyes out for suspicious birds. After all, they could spare it.

The sixth plane held nothing new, which wasn't much of a surprise - the fifth was good enough to blindside any rogue magicians. The seventh, by appearances, was the same, but I felt suspicious. Call it a gut feeling. Call it intuition. Call it several thousand years of practice seeing what disguise attempts on the seventh level look like. The point is, I wasn't reassured. Things looked clear to my sight, but I looked the same on the various planes to those sentries on watch. And while I am, of course, a master of disguise among my many talents, I was also bright enough to know never to assume.

Especially when the seventh level is the level stronger spirits lurk on.

All in all, it was depressingly as I'd expected. I'd done a bit of reconnaissance (I'd had to, with the boy not even bothering with an address. Magicians always think the world positively revolves around whatever petty squabbles are going on in their own tiny patch of dirt. One morning you're in China, the next afternoon it's South Africa, and all of them utterly convinced that their own local jostling for power are such interesting, important affairs that we spirits have been following every word of the decades-long dramas) and it confirmed what I already knew - the boy was someone's patsy. The imps I'd beaten up were all in agreement that Lovelace was not to be trifled with, and my essence would be on the line if ever identified. (Magicians have the most regrettable tendency to hold a grudge against us, the slaves, as if we had something against them. Well, we do, of course, but all the same.)

But if the kid wanted that thing, I had no choice.

The rain was slowly trickling to a stop when the crow took off a bit heavily and flew in a curving arc that just happened to avoid the round blotch of light cast from the streetlamp. It landed with a hop in a narrow patch of grass between two of the several trash bags left out for collection by the edge of the street. A few more hops took it out of sight.

A cat that nestled within a nearby evergreen bush watched this entire affair (On the second plane as well as the first. Cats have that power) and kept its green eyes fixed on the spot, waiting for the bird to reappear. After a minute had passed, it slid out from beneath the twigs, braving the damp grass to stalk across the ground, readying itself to pounce. But it found only a short gap between the bags, with a round hole in the grass, smelling of damp, freshly dug earth.


	2. Chapter 2

I hate the feel of earth. When you're digging, the stuff cakes your paws, sticking and grinding against your essence. It's impossible to keep your mouth clear of dirt, and mud - augh. The water seeps in, dragging the dirt along for the ride, insult and injury together. You will not find the average spirit well-versed in digging. We spirits are creatures of air and fire, and there is a reason that virtually everyone, from lowly imp to such noble spirits as myself, tend to pick birds or, if necessary, some flying insect. If we must pick an earthbound body, it's something fast and maneuverable, and preferably, able to climb. And no form makes having earth above you even remotely tolerable.

But conversely, you will not find the average spirit on the lookout for digging, or the average wards designed for it, given none of us will willingly engage in such a pastime. Slaves, though, don't get to be picky, and it would be stupid to charge right through the shield if I didn't have to. Unfortunately, my assumption that it did not extend underground was correct, and this was, lamentably, the best option. The pygmy shrew dug its way far underground, beneath the bottom of the wall. No magical alarm sounded, though the shrew did hit its head on a pebble five times. (Once each on five different pebbles. Not the same pebble five times. Just want to make that clear. Sometimes you human beings are so dense.) The shrew burrowed furiously, finally reaching the surface again after about twenty minutes of snuffling and scruffling.

The shrew shoved its tiny nose through the gap it had made between the roots of Simon Lovelace's pampered, pedicured lawn grass, a sense of relief filling me to be able to feel air against the tips of my essence-formed whiskers. Still, I resisted the urge to climb free, staying in the damp hole. I peered around the area from my position in the hollow, looking for anything suspicious. The ground floor was brightly lit, though the curtains were drawn. Oh well, it probably wasn't there anyway. I couldn't see much of the upper floors, but from what I could make out, it was completely dark. The irritating, translucent blue threads of the magical alarm system rippled in the sky above. One of the ugly yellow sentries floated along unconcernedly fifteen feet above the ground, oblivious to my earthen hiding place, and another was just visible going around the corner. Presumably, the rest were behind the house.

I checked the seventh plane once again. It remained clear, and that sense of anxiety remained just as present in the core of my essence. I couldn't shake the certainty that there must be something more present.

Regretfully, shrew backed up, hiding its head below the dirt-covered sod, away from the various senses of the sentries. It tunneled underground, just below the bottom of the grass roots of the lawn, until it hit a new, softer section of dirt. Its head popped up again in a bed of various colored trumpet-shaded flowers, just below a set of wide glass windows. I was thinking about my next move. Going further in this guise was of little use. It was possible I might find an open hole into the cellar, but just as possible I wouldn't, and either way I'd have to spend the next few hours tunneling around to search. As far as I was concerned, spending the next few minutes underground was more than I could take. No, I'd change tactics now.

The sound of clinking glasses suddenly came to the my ears, followed by a delicate laugh. It was surprisingly loud, for a moment seeming like it must have come from some people right near me. Glancing around in confusion, I spied its true origin: a large air vent with wide slats was set into the wall right in front of me, a mere foot from the ground. It was cracked with age, suggesting it had been quite forgotten by Lovelace, who struck me as the sort to replace anything with some tacky new mess in the latest style at the slightest excuse.

It would do nicely as an infiltration point.

I backed down once more into the hole, trusting that the smothering earth would disguise my essence from any watchers just as it blinded me, and with a deep sense of relief, I changed into a blowfly with a faintly shimmering blue-green carapace.

The air hummed as the blowfly shot from the tunnel, bobbed once in the air, looped, and slid between two slightly rusted slats into the air vent and the house.


	3. Chapter 3

So I've got an account over on Archive of Our Own. I'll still be updating this because I started it here, though, but you should check them out. I have a few invites that are linked on my profile if you want an account.

We're starting to diverge a bit now...

* * *

Buzzing through the vents was easy. Flies do well in still air. The only thing to remember was to stop a bit back from the vent slats and walk the rest of the way. Humans can be generally assumed to be incompetent in any given area, but for some reason they have a sixth sense for the drone of fly wings. Peering out from the relative security of the air vent, I saw... a drawing room. It didn't look much different than the last one I'd seen, either. (Why do magicians insist on clinging to ancient fashions? It's so boring! The only good thing about being summoned is that I can insult the new stupid things magicians make up. It's no fun if they just stick to the old stuff. There's only so many different ways you can insult the same dozen objects. Oh, I know my wit is all new to them, but it's dead boring from my side of things.) The closest this got to different was that the two oil paintings were darker with age than ones before. For all I knew they might be the same ones. Magicians were packrats. The rest was standard: thick red carpet, a hideous..._thing_ that was supposed to be a chandelier, garish multicolored wallpaper that strained even my compound eyes...I don't know how magicians liked these designs. I spied two people sitting at a small coffee table with a dark green bottle of wine on, of all things, a silver tray. The glasses and their carpet-colored contents were in the hands of the two people.

One of them was a woman. I guessed she was youngish (in a human sense, of course. You're all infinitely young from our point of view...yet paradoxically, wither up and die in a few years while we remain as spry as ever. Pathetic from start to finish, the lot.) and, I supposed, good-looking from a human viewpoint. Big dark eyes, black hair cut short, moderate chest and slim hips, with the slightest trace of very nearly faded freckles under her makeup. I memorized her. Human attractiveness, in a general sense, is pretty basic, but the exact standards required for actual jaw-dropping change every few decades. I might appear in her guise tomorrow when I went back to visit that kid. Naked. (This was one of those tricks best pulled on them young, or more accurately, _not_ something to pull on anyone experienced. Trust me.) We'd see how his 'steely', self-important little mind responded to that. There were even good odds he'd stumble right out of his pentacle - backwards.

(For those inevitably wondering: of course I have no difficultly becoming a woman. Humans. You don't expect me to have any difficulty turning into a man, easily accept me turning into any number of animals, and they're all exactly as far from my true self. Admittedly we spirits, especially those above the rank of imps, tend to identify ourselves as male, but that's entirely for practical reasons.)

But that was a plan for later. Right now, the man on the other side of the table was where I needed to focus. At least the fashions seemed to have updated since my last summoning: He was tall, thin, and vain, with his hair slicked back by some kind of thick oil. He had small half-moon spectacles and big white teeth in a bigger mouth, and he wore a terribly boring gray suit with a white shirt underneath. Something told me that this was the magician the boy wanted me to find, Simon Lovelace. Perhaps it was the way he gestured like he owned the place. Perhaps it was his disgusting sense of fashion. Then again, perhaps it was the small imp floating (invisible, of course, on the first plane) above one gray-suited shoulder, its oversized ears pricked for any sound of danger and huge blue eyes searching every corner of the room.

Naturally, he was the one talking. That was another clue. Magicians love to hear their own voice. Oddly, instead of telling him to shut up, upending her glass (and perhaps the bottle for good measure) over his oily head, and leaving in all haste, the woman seemed to be honestly interested in his blathering.

I was fidgeting badly by this point, alternately rubbing my legs over my wings or against each other. The smaller the form, the faster the ache builds up. Remaining still, as I had to do or risk alerting them to the sound of my buzzing wings, is a similarly bad idea. But I couldn't just switch forms here. The imp would notice.

(I wasn't afraid of any lowly imp, of course. Indeed, I doubted anything _could_ be afraid of this particular imp's nonexistent physical prowess. But it was there to keep watch, and for that, I had no doubt of its abilities. Imp summoning was low ranked stuff that even poor magicians could manage, and Lovelace was rather more highly spoken of than that. Though it wouldn't be able to see me from here, traces of my aura would likely leak out in the second between forms and tip it off.)

And it wasn't as if there was anything to take my mind off it. From the woman's expression you'd think the conversation was enthralling. Was it? Of course not:

"...could never turn down such an opportunity, love. The man's a glutton. We have nothing to worry about on that score."

"That's not what I hear," she said, still smiling foolishly.

"My enemies have bigger mouths than they have brains," he said with a controlled flourish of the wine glass. "No one has any idea. They think it's simply..."

See what I mean? Boring. I made my way well back into the vents and with relief shifted into a sleek black beetle, which then skittered back to the vent. My new form was, in one of the many paradoxes imposed by material existence, better suited for lurking, at least in terms of my own comfort. I paced back and forth as I listened, already in better spirits.

I doubted I'd missed anything important. It wasn't like he'd stopped talking.

"...finished, even after that disaster with the glass. You're a marvel." He smiled flatteringly at her. "And your servants! Not the slightest problem with them the entire time. However did you manage?"

She laughed in a tinkling, practiced way. "When they knew it was being constructed by your 'servants'? I hardly had to do anything, did I?"

"None of them..."

"Oh, they're commoners! They think you use them for everything. Mind you," she said with a smirk, "it helped that that cook of yours let slip some few comments about needing blood sacrifices to finish the job."

"Did he really?" Lovelace said, amused.

And so on. I paced about, wondering if I should continue on. They seemed endlessly delighted in discussing whatever minor intrigue they were planning. I'd been hoping they might leave together, or at least get involved in some other, more distracting exercise while I investigated the house. If I had to steal from Lovelace, so be it, but it'd be preferable not to have to do it right under his noise as well.

But luck was with me. Finally, the imp's massive ears swiveled, followed by most of its eyestalks turning to watch the door. It tapped the side of Lovelace's face lightly. His eyes flicked to it, then turned to face the doorway, setting his glass down on the silver tray. A moment later, the door opened and a dark-jacketed servant appeared. I considered him on the other planes. Human.

That was a bit odd, especially with all I'd heard of Lovelace's prodigal skill. Well, perhaps it was the fashion. If this were the rule rather than the exception, I might be in luck. I glanced back at the silver tray. Yes, human servants.

Lucky indeed. Magicians have guardians, of course. Can't get around it. But those I could plan for. Magicians that summon spirits for every possible job are a lot tricker. I've lost count of how many jobs I've seen, from both sides, that went to pieces because one minor imp or another charged with sweeping noticed an infiltrator and sounded the alarm.

There was a short display of disgusting servility (Spirits may be obedient and at times even flattering, but we're magically bound to this world in slavery to a bunch of sadistic monomaniacs. What's your excuse?) followed by an equally sickening exchange between Lovelace and the woman, which, for decency's sake, I will not repeat. Suffice it to say the phrase "pains me to leave" featured prominently.

_Humans_.

Lovelace and the woman finally made their exit, the imp trailing along behind. The door clicked shut. That done with, I crawled out of the vent. After another quick look around the beetle lifted its shell, spread its wings and sped across the room to land on the carpet by the door. It wriggled easily underneath.

The hall was tiled in a painfully bland pattern of black and white squares, each completely uniform. Ferns sat miserably along the sides in large - and here I must admit I paused to stare - silver pots. Aside from everything else, they clashed terribly with the floor. I considered my surroundings. I couldn't sense the presence of any active spirits. If there were any bound into the hallway's walls or floor, they were completely inert, the sort that would only activate if triggered. Easy going.

The beetle made its way down the hallway tiles. I idly cursed the polish for how slippery it made things as I passed various unimpressive doors. The walls were covered in more hideous oil paintings, every one of them dark and muddy. One of them I even recognized. I'd known the magician who commissioned it back in the day. Then, it had been a mass of brilliant color, each bit of the landscape covered in fine detailing. Now it compared unfavorably to a painting done in colored clay by a half-blind idiot.

The beetle slid to a halt, legs flailing backward to kill its momentum, antenna waving. Here was more what I'd been expecting from Lovelace. A staircase led to the next story, where I could feel a trace of essence from some lurker. It faded out on the higher planes, suggesting it was a lowly imp. (Which plane a spirit is "on" is where most of its essence is, with...well, you might say reflections making up their presence on the rest of the planes, except that they're all part of the same single creature. Imagine you'd bleed if I stabbed your shadow and you grasp the basic concept. The lowest of us have trouble moving above the first few, so that the reflection they cast onto the highest planes is usually extremely weak. The highest of us - marids - have similar problems going below.)

It was the first sign of an actual guard I'd found since entering, making it a good bet for the hiding place of the Amulet. The beetle spread its wings and rose into the air, speeding above the carpeted stairs.

The hallway above was wood floored, with rugs on the walls. Rarely have I had the opportunity to see so many different sorts of terrible decorating skill all in the same place. Usually one terrible idea is enough for an empire.

It branched. I followed the faint tinge of essence to another door. This one was flush against the floor and ceiling. Hm.

There is little in this material world that is perfect. I transformed myself again, into smoke. I pushed one tendril through the crack above the door, just enough to scope out the area.

The imp was a donut shaped thing wrapped around the ceiling light, eyes covering its outward sides. No prizes for guessing what its job was. It had done an impressive job of disguise (for an imp). On the first plane it was an extension of the gaudy metal-and-cut-glass light fixture, and it had done its best on the second and third, matching the colors and shapes quite well for such a low class of spirit, although not so well a trained eye such as mine couldn't pick it out. And even if I had somehow missed it, by the fourth its shape had distorted badly and it was colored an odd sort of puce.

Well, that was easily enough dealt with. I slid a thin tendril of smoke down carefully, keeping it pressed into the corner of the wall, until I reached the light switch.

Don't be stupid. Of course I didn't flip it off. The imp, remember? Ring of eyes watching every bit of the room? You're hopeless.

No, I pushed the tendril of smoke through the gap in the switch, then shoved, breaking the circuit. The room went black. The imp was blind. I pushed the rest of myself through the gap, down to the floor, then flowed across to the door at the other end and slid under.

Success.

The room was windowless, of course. Glass-fronted cabinets covered the walls, filled with all manner of baubles, though now that I was in the room I could also feel the glow of a few items of actual power.

I became a boy.

Not the kid who summoned me. Oh, I could have turned into that stupid apprentice to give Lovelace a head start when he began to piece the theft together. But however much I detest my masters, there's no love lost for the other magicians either. They're all the same. And it wasn't like he needed the clue. Lovelace would find and kill the stupid kid no matter what, so he might as well have to work at it.  
No, I changed into someone else, someone that Lovelace - anyone - would never recognize. He was a year or so older than the apprentice who summoned me, tan-skinned with bright black eyes and wearing a plain white kilt. He cocked his head to one side and began to investigate the room.

A good number of the things were simply bits of corpses. Bones featured prominently, as did a large stuffed coelacanth. Others were actual artifacts, largely ancient curios, poor quality single-use stuff with some simple mite stuffed inside as a charge. A couple weren't even that, the spirit inside having obviously been activated long ago.

It was rather like collecting spent cartridges, really. You'd think magicians would know better than to think the shell of a thing had any importance of its own, but they never do. It's one of the many constants. Lovelace did have some things actually worthy of his defenses hidden among the junk, though.  
There were a number of wands that still seemed active. The boy bent his head to get a better look. Including nearly a half dozen inferno sticks. I hadn't realized there were any left. The imps inside much have been stuck there since the fall of Prague, which must have been around a century ago by now. The boy made a face. How awful! To think, I'd bet that the shoddy binding work would give out in a few years, a decade at the most. Shame the artificers were all dead, I suppose I owe them a bit of an apology.

There was little more recent than those.

True artifacts are not simply a spirit or spirits placed inside an object. They're bound into it, with all their essence interwoven with its material nature and all of their energy channeled to do something they couldn't, ie, imps, inferno, at the cost of doing nothing else. That kind of warping costs blood. The greater the power, the greater the sacrifice. Anything higher than an imp tends to be fatal, and anything higher than a djinni is. In the good old days, when kings were in charge, their magician subjects were simply ordered to make them anyway, resulting in a truly powerful king and a regular thinning of the magician herds. Then one bunch figured out it was far more cost effective to have two dozen magicians who could summon djinn over and over again than defending the whole place using one man with a sword that could cut through anything and a shield that would never break, and it was all downhill from there.

Which is how we end up in the lamentable present: magicians want such greater artifacts enough that they'll kill for them, but not quite enough to die for them. The result is they're left squabbling over the dwindling pieces that remain from less enlightened times.

Case in point: on one shelf was a summoning horn at least two thousand years old. It was the source of most of the magic I could sense in the room. It bled energy in waves strong enough to distort the planes, like air on a hot day. A nasty piece of work, with two matching burns on either side in the shape of a hand - all that remained of the first magician to use it. No mere imp powered that thing, and whoever had made it hadn't known when to stop: it was bound in iron and skin. Anyone summoned by that... Unlike most artifacts, it did nothing here, on any plane. Its only effect would be in the Other Place, but what an effect it would be.

In the next cabinet was... I stared. Amid a number of teeth, human and otherwise, was an eye made of smooth, hard clay. It had no magical aura at all - likely the magician himself thought it was only another forgery pawned off to visiting tourists - but I'd recognize one anywhere. They're hard to forget.

The boy turned away sharply. Enough of that.

I'd come for the Amulet. Unlike the eye, the magician had hidden this one away, in a case far to the back wrapped around a gaudy statue. To mortal eyes it just looked tacky, gold with a giant purple gem in the center. To mine, though, it was far more ominous.

It pulsed like a bubbling geyser. On the seventh plane, bits of essence broke off to spread out across the room like blood in water. On the others, the energy swelled outward then fell back to be sucked in again, the steady rhythm like a beating heart. The essence leak from the other items distorted and vanished where it touched the gemstone.  
The Amulet of Samarkand.

The boy walked up to it nonchalantly, then punched his fist through the glass.

Alarms exploded across the planes. One wall warped, ripping open to form a portal. I didn't pause to see what was coming through. Life tip: looking behind you slows you down. Pulling the Amulet over my head with one hand, I sprinted for the door. It was solid metal, wedged firmly in place. The boy reached out with one thin arm and pushed. The door bent inwards with a screech and gave, smashing into the dark corridor beyond.

The imp dropped from the ceiling, uncoiling and rearing up like a snake. Its other side was covered in a mass of inward facing teeth. No time to deal with that. I flicked a compression at it and it imploded into a copper colored nugget as I ran on, smashing through the second door and diving round the corner.

The wall next to me exploded. A detonation. My opponent was perhaps a fellow djinni. I jumped down the stairs without pausing, hitting the tile with a smack, pulling up a protective shield around myself. There was a bellow behind me, one I recognized. A djinni all right. I rewove my shield, strengthening it. It was harder to run in one, but I didn't have much further to go.

"YOU!" Ah. And he recognized me as well. _Lovely_. I pushed myself to go faster even as I wove yet another protective layer to my shield. Another tip: Winning and succeeding are two different and often mutually exclusive things. I was planning to be quite successful at getting out of here intact.

I wouldn't be able to retrace my steps with the Amulet, it was far too heavy. (Strength may remain a constant, but things like leverage do not.) But I'd never intended to go out the way I came in. There had been plenty of windows, and I made for one now, a large one in the middle of a library filled to the brim with rare books (or at least decent forgeries of them) only to skid to a halt inches in front of it. One of the guardians outside was doing a poor job of lurking, one ugly eye visible in the frosted glass of the window's corner.

I, a noble djinni, would _win_ against any mere foliot, but he would slow me down. If I were lucky, I'd be done before my pursuer or any other spirit reached me. If I wasn't...well, impressive as my capabilities may be, even I would do well not to get involved in a multi-spirit battle on (or in fact somewhat further in) the doorstep of a major magician. I didn't like relying on luck under these circumstances.

Instead I did a sharp turn and took off again, making it back to the hallway just in time to be hit by a detonation. I caught a flash of the other figure as I was tossed through the air by the explosion: a jackal-headed man the color of fresh blood. On the fifth and sixth, it wavered, bulging and twisting grotesquely, and by the seventh it was little more than a mass of red with teeth.

Not in the best of moods, obviously. It would be wrong to impose on him any further, I felt. Luckily, my shield held, and the force of the blast had knocked me further along, away from him. I paused a second by the next door I came to, but after shattering the carved rosewood in half I spied another of the foliots behind the stained glass. Best to keep going. I resumed running just ahead of another detonation.

The same was true at the next window. Lovelace's guardians evidently intended to make up for their utter incompetence at stealth through persistence. An inferno splashed across my shield, the flames causing it to warp and thin. I was starting to consider I might have to chance a window anyway.

Another door was in front of me, this one ajar. I bolted through and slammed it shut behind me, shucking off my shield and molding it into the door.

Once you're focused on dodging your current enemies, it's easy to forget to keep an eye out for any new ones. A quite understandable mistake. Happens to the best of us.

Before me was a large red-faced man, dressed in a cook's outfit. His coloring was English. His exact features - tiny flat nose, angular chin, too-high cheekbones, thick eyelids - had not been seen for a few hundred years, since a number of magicians in a small country of Central Asia had made a series of truly epic mistakes, the first of which had been trusting his advice.

"Faquarl," I said.

He smiled broadly. "Bartimaeus." He wore the same shape across the various planes, with only the aura of his essence identifying him as other than he seemed.

A detonation hit the door.

"Working with Jabor, I see," I said, eying my surroundings as further detonations sounded, followed by the crash that was almost certainly Jabor giving up on such niceties and simply ramming himself into the barrier. The room was, naturally enough, a kitchen. In the sink to one corner was a high pile of what looked distressingly like genuine silverware. Beyond looked to be a small greenhouse, with familiar yellow shapes lurking past the glass. They looked positively friendly. "He's still quite enthusiastic, isn't he."

"And your skills of observation remain as astute as they ever were," he said, placing the knife he held on the counter and selecting another one that hung on the very end of the row. "So you may not have realized, but you seem to, surely by the purest and most innocent of chance, have picked up a certain trinket that does not belong to you. If you could be so good to hand it to me, perhaps we can end this without too much violence."

Unlike magicians, we slaves generally keep our slavery in mind.. The dull-witted lower imps may hold grudges, but even the least foliot understands there's nothing personal to any conflict. Just as we have no free will, so too our opponents. As such, if the situation arises where one of us is beaten, we, unlike our masters, do our best to work things out civilly if it's at all possible. It is standard courtesy to work out if there's any way for the fellow spirit to retreat without violating the letter of their contract.

Faquarl wasn't even making a token attempt. I can't say I really expected it, but the rudeness of it still rankled me.

"You know I can't do that," I said levelly. I had leeway in how I attempted my task, but I was still bound to it.

Faquarl waved the silver knife in his hands idly. "But you have no choice, Bartimaeus. You are surrounded on all sides. It's simply a matter of who gets to eat you now - oh, stop edging toward the window. You can't beat the foliots, or they wouldn't have been able to herd you right to me. The least you could do is die quietly."

I wisely kept silent. The pounding on the other side of my shield continued. Jabor was, as always, reliable.

Faquarl laughed. "Don't tell me you think you'll escape! It was luck last time, and that seems to have run out." Pre-fight banter. Another reason to avoid the whole business. He didn't expect me to give up - all of us, generally, will fight almost to the bitter end - but he couldn't resist the chance of insulting me.

I made a show of considering. Then I said, "Perhaps you're right," and reached toward the Amulet.

Faquarl's eyes bulged and he flinched back, starting to duck under the table, his cook form shrinking as his essence shifted shape. It wasn't the best of ploys. He'd only be fooled for a second, but that was all I needed. I released my crumbling shield, Jabor rocketed through the powdered remains of the door past me, who'd edged sideways a bit, and into the table Farquarl sat at, and set off a detonation in the middle of the room for good measure.

That bought me the next second. The room was filled with dust and an enraged Jabor. I could hear Farquarl diving toward the window where I'd been a second ago as I, low to the ground as a serpent, slithered quickly toward the greenhouse. A second later he yelped, hitting the glass he thought I'd already broken.

I grew, smashing through the top of the greenhouse and changing again, this time into a cat. The cat jumped from the slippery glass onto the roof and proceeded to run back along the top of the house. A detonation caved in the shingles behind me, but I was moving too fast, I jumped to the next story, making for the highest point, a tower on the other corner of the house. Jabor was pounding along behind me, accompanied by crashes and snapping sounds. I tossed a few detonations behind me, unaimed and too weak to do any real damage, then, as I reached the top of the tower, an illumination as strong as I could manage.

I jumped and changed again, this time into a roc. I needed altitude. I beat my wings frantically. Birds are good at staying in the air, but not at rising straight up under their own power, and the weight of the Amulet dragged at me. I caught a glimpse of feathers below me. No more time. I needed to get away before they reached the same height.

I changed one more time, into a falcon. Then, as the weight of the Amulet made me drop like I was more stone than bird, I flung out both my wings to full extension and, muscle and bone screaming under the stress, shot across London and out of sight.

* * *

Now you see why this took so long. The chapter lengths in the book are horrendously inconsistent. The last chapter was, what, barely more than a page? And this is nearly nine... o_O Anyway, after this we get to get into Nathaniel's backstory. In other words, the juicy plot bits. There will be much more divergence there.


	4. Chapter 4

The boy descended slowly, carefully, one step at a time. He didn't want to go down, he knew he should have just stopped but he kept going. Everything about the eerie silence and garish sunlight felt wrong, fake, hiding something so much worse, but he kept walking anyway because he had to, his master had told him to go to the room and find the box and put on the glasses and he had to, he must obey his master at all times without question because demons were wicked and would hurt him and before he knew it the door was before him.

He knew this door. It was the last one, with five sided star scrawled blood red across it. The heavy wood loomed bigger and bigger in his vision as he approached. His hand found the knob and twisted it. For a second the door seemed stuck and the same horrible hope came to him as always - it was stuck, it wouldn't open, he didn't have to go in - but he couldn't stop himself from shoving the door, and he pushed it inch by inch over the thick carpet until there was a narrow, clutching gap that he began to force himself through with agonizing slowness, certain at any moment something would appear.

The room inside was a green tinged golden from the light beyond the huge window, the sight making him sick with terror. It was a trap. Any moment now they'd come for him. He had to get away. A massive box lay on the desk. He started to walk toward it. The pens on the desk kept rearranging themselves in the corner of his eye but never the one he tried to look at, and if he could just see it, if he could just see it happen he could run, but he couldn't and he was halfway to the box now, in the middle of the room and he knew at any moment they'd realize he was there, they'd appear and he had to run now before they were ready or -

There was something behind him. He stopped suddenly and turned around, and now there were things moving at the edge of his vision that he couldn't see no matter how he turned.

The boy ran to the table. He just had to get the box and then he could get out, run back down the hall to safety.

He faced the table once again, the metal box glinting in the horrible sunlight, looking like if he opened it it would unleash something terrible. He reached for it anyway, across the impossibly long desk, not wanting to take the time to walk around. But no matter how he leaned over the table and stretched his arms, it was always just barely out of his grasp, and he was wasting time. He panicked and reached out wildly, knocking over a small pot of pens. They sprayed across the desk.

The boy broke out in sweat. He felt like it was wrong, like breaking something that shouldn't be broken, that he shouldn't pick them up and just get out, but he began to collect the pens anyway and stuff them into the pot again in the hopes that if he could fix it fast enough put them all back like it'd never happened then nothing would notice he was there. But no matter how many he picked up there were always more.

Something whispered. He spun around. The room was empty, the door still partly open. As he stared at it he thought the door was moving slightly, opening or shutting and he panicked, dropping the pot and sending pens clattering everywhere. He had to get out now.

He edged backward into the desk, keeping his eyes on the door. Something rapped on the window behind him.

He spun. The window covered the whole of the wall, made of tinted, frosted glass that glowed a golden green. He could see nothing on the other side, but the rapping only grew more insistent, louder, until he knew it would break through the glass at any moment.

He lunged for the box, his fingers finally closing on the edge and yanking it toward him, the sun-heated metal searing his hand but he was too scared to let go now that he finally had it.

The rapping stopped.

In the silence, he heard the soft plunks as, one by one, the pens began to move, rolling off the edge of the desk. He whimpered, too scared to move.

The boy watched as the last one fell.

Something horrible laughed softly in his ear.

He dropped the box and swung at the sound, touching nothing, his eyes clenched shut. When he opened them again the room was still empty.

The box had fallen open, exposing a pair of glasses. He grabbed them and ran for the door.

It slammed shut.

The doorknob didn't turn at all, was fake carved into the wood. He pounded his fists against the door and cried for his master and when there was no answer he stopped and cowered, realizing that they'd hear him and know he was there and trapped and maybe if he was very quiet, maybe...

Something rapped on the window, sharp and insistent. Something hissed in the air.

He crouched there, curled in a ball against the door, the spectacles clutched in one hand.

"Go - go away," he said. "Go away!"

Silence.

Then pounding against the window, louder and louder like it was trying to smash its way in.

There was only one thing left to do, and he knew it would only make it worse but he was so scared and he wanted it to be over, and he closed his eyes and put the glasses on like he'd been told and then sat there shaking while the thing at the window pounded harder and harder and finally not knowing was worse and he opened his eyes.

The window was dark, eclipsed by something bent and terrible with slender reaching arms of different lengths. And it was not the worst thing. The worst things were already inside with him, covering every surface of the room, everywhere but the tiny patch he sat in. A thousand tiny monsters and as one their mouths split open to show a thousand thousand tiny teeth -

Nathaniel woke with a scream, covered in cold sweat. His heart hammered in his chest. He wrapped his arms around his legs and stared into the darkness, forcing himself to calm down. _I'm not scared_, he told himself. _I'm not. I'm not._ His master's words echoed in his skull. _"Demons are very wicked. They will hurt you if they can."_ But he wouldn't let them. He would never let them. He wasn't a scared little boy anymore, he had nothing to be scared of. He was eleven, almost a magician, and he knew all the words of summoning and dismissal now.

"I'll never make a mistake," he whispered to himself in the empty room. "It was just a trick. I didn't do anything wrong. I'll never do anything wrong. I'll never let them get me."


	5. Chapter 5

I crawled painfully to my feet, having left a trail of scraped essence across the rooftop. The limits of my steering ability with the Amulet were reached at "not straight down", so I hadn't had much in the way of options. When I realized I wasn't going to clear the next building I'd changed myself to a leathery ball. Hitting had hurt, but at least I was intact.

And there was no time for self-pity, however deserved after what I'd been through. I had a head start, but Faquarl and Jabor had seen the direction I'd taken off in and were no doubt already closing in. I needed to move. I collected my burden. Just hiding wouldn't be good enough, not with the Amulet. Its distinctive pulse would give me away to anything that got close. Now an eagle, I took off to my left, heading deeper into the city.

I guessed I'd seen the stronger of Lovelace's servants already. Faquarl and Jabor were each forces to be reckoned with, and I doubted he had anyone else of that caliber under his thumb. And he didn't seem to use spirits as widely as some I'd seen, which meant he would only have a limited number of miscellaneous imps to send out now. But he was said to be a skilled magician, and his choice of slaves supported that. He'd likely be summoning a lesser host even now.

As I've said, foliots and imps are nothing much to one of my caliber, but in large numbers things could get tricky, and there was always the possibility there might be some particularly suited for hunting me down somewhere in their records of names.

It's important to understand that my own impressive skills are not exactly standard to all spirits, easy as I make it look. We come in quite a variety, which tends to confuse everyone but us.

Magicians attempt to deal with such natural inferiority by ranking us obsessively. They go about it with every wrong assumption imaginable, but by trial and error they eventually managed to get the broad strokes of it right, even if their reasoning for it was nonsense. Spirits are classed into five groups according to strength, from marids at the top down to imps at the bottom. This is broadly accurate. Never ones to be satisfied with accuracy, from there they go on to invent subclasses of such-and-such rank, or inane cladistic attempts - yes, with_ innately formless essence patterns_ - based on observed forms, going on about basilisks and other garbage. And then there's the foul business with succubi. The less said the better.

We spirits can be more accurately considered chunks of essence, ripped cruelly from the Other Place and forced into form here. There are several elemental aspects of essence, but most combinations are - well, suffice to say that of what magicians class "demons", sentient spirits, the element of fire is needed, and that the balance for different elements largely only works within certain ranges of essence. Afrits, djinn and foliots are made of air and fire. Afrits are powerful and mostly of fire, while foliots are weaker and basically hot air. Djinn like myself represent the proper balance of the two elements. Imps are smaller balls of essence, often tainted with bits of water essence. The particular amounts of essence summoned within the basic range determine the overall power and particular skills of the spirit. Think of it a bit like your DNA. Only superior, obviously.

Then there are marids, which strictly are a different type entirely, not that magicians understand this. They're fire and water, and so only exist with large amounts of both essence making up their forms. As such, marids are extremely powerful. Luckily, they're as hard to summon and control as they are to fight, so it's rare to run into them.

Past marids, not that anyone can generally summon them, the amount of essence involved is enough that any combination of the three elements is possible. By that point, anything that comes over is vast enough it tends to create a sort of weak space, where some of the rules of the Other Place come into play.

(Below imps are little essence fragments that get all sorts of names depending on the fashion. The catch-all term is, or was, mites, last I heard, but then your standard idiotic sorting urges took over and magicians tried to break them into different groups depending on how they looked. Not that it matters much either way.)

With all this in mind, what should I expect? Imps, largely, there to track me down, with a smaller company of foliots intended to jump me once that happened. Possibly some additional weaker djinn instead if Lovelace was particularly on the ball. It would come down mostly to luck. As long as I didn't stumble into a bunch of them and made sure no imp managed to both find me and signal the others, odds were in my favor. I just needed to keep moving until dawn, when the boy would summon me.

Yes, I know. Of course it'd have been easier to let me return as soon as I was done, or at least for him to have kept an eye on Lovelace's house and summoned me back once the place started swarming like a kicked ant's nest, but why consider my wellbeing? _I'm_ just a lowly slave. Part of my initial delay had been wanting to run out the clock as long as possible, without, of course, cutting it too close. It's never fun to be summoned right before your beak closes on the desired bauble.

It'd be tiresome, but the hard part was over. The eagle landed on a damp oak branch and began preening some of the wet from its feathers as I kept an eye out for signs of pursuit. Beneath its breast feathers, the Amulet throbbed. At least the drizzling seemed to be tapering off. Perhaps it'd even stop for a few hours.

I spied the glow of essence off to my left. It looked like it was headed this way. The Amulet throbbed again and I took the hint, taking off again. I swooped over several streets, only to nearly run into another searching imp, a ball of eyes, ears and noses. I chucked a compression into its ugly face before it could send off any alarm and then booked it - the others would likely notice its disappearance. I went to land again, saw another imp in the distance, and kept moving, starting to get unnerved.

There seemed to be an awful lot in this single area, as if the entire force had converged on the neighborhood. Had something given me away? I flew straight for a while, changing altitude to make me harder to pinpoint, but the imps remained a constant presence.

Could Lovelace really have summoned so many? I didn't think so, even if he were far stronger than advertised. They didn't even seem to have originated from any one point. Multiple magicians must have been summoning slaves and sending them out. The Amulet was a potent artifact, and worthy of such effort, but how could the others know it was stolen so quickly? And Lovelace couldn't have simply gone to them - magicians don't work together unless forced. Backstabbing is more their style. Either he had serious leverage on a number of others, enough that he actually expected to get an artifact like this back once another magician had their paws on it, or... I had a sinking feeling. Or, this was government business - the only organization ever capable of herding the feral cats magicians behaved like. Yes, that must have been it. Lovelace was holding it with the full sanctions of the government. He'd certainly spent enough time bragging about his hold over the Prime Minister to that woman.

I was getting exhausted by the continual flight. It was starting to seem like a poor pick of form, anyway - good for getting away fast, but with imps this thick in the air, moving too fast just brought me into the zone of the next one. I needed to stay in the areas between them.

I swooped down by the side of the river and changed again, into a jackal, which hunkered down on the muddy bank, shuddering in disgust. I hoped that would muffle the Amulet. The aura's essence was unfortunately of the mixed type I mentioned found in stronger entities, which meant water and earth couldn't be relied on to fully block its presence. Still, it was better than nothing. And uncomfortable as it was, I needed some rest.

An hour passed like this. I was just starting to relax when I caught a stray tendril of essence. I'd missed it for a while, distracted by the general leakage of the Amulet, and I realized it was a pack of disguised foliots seconds before they reached me.

I had no choice. I shifted into the form of something with flukes and shot into the water. It wasn't particularly fishlike but between panic and sheer revulsion I managed to get halfway across the river in seconds. Then I caught myself. I changed to a more stable form, that of a crocodile, then went still, letting the current pull me under and sweep me downstream, shuddering as the muddy water buffeted me and tiny pinpricks of iron tore at my essence. But I had guessed right - the foliots headed for the opposite bank, knowing that any spirit's first instinct would be to get out of the water again as soon as possible.

Carefully, I began swimming upstream again, forcing myself to stay below the surface. The foliots began to spread out, heading downstream, either guessing my gambit or assuming I'd been overpowered by the current. They were a bit more on the nose about that than I'd have liked - I was already getting tired just treading water, and my shape wasn't constructed that tightly. My essence, needless to say, was utterly saturated with wet and muck.

Finally, the foliots split, one group heading upstream and the other further downstream. I dragged myself onto the bank and lay for a moment, letting some of the water drain off me.

Even mud hadn't been enough to hide it. That left one final option - if I couldn't muffle the aura, I needed somewhere I could hide the aura itself. Somewhere chaotic, not only with magical items present but with them jostling around enough that picking out any one aura was impossible. Somewhere like...a marketplace.

Look, I was desperate. And we all know what desperate times call for.

I changed form into a mass of claws and sinew, and made my way up the side of the building. I was too tired to get myself airborne under my own power. Instead I dropped off the edge as an albatross and managed to catch a lucky updraft. I headed back into the center of the city.

Despite the late hour and the earlier weather, I could see Trafalgar Square still boasted a good sized colony of tourists (Or do you call a group of tourists a plague? My general brilliance with languages notwithstanding, I do confuse the occasional collective noun.) moving about in their hideous flowery shirts. I landed on another rooftop, transformed yet again, and hopped down into an unattended alley.

A young Egyptian boy made his way out and into the square. He was dressed with more restraint than most of those about, in plain blue jeans and a white shirt with a high collar, an ensemble I hoped left it ambiguous if he was some naturalized immigrant or just a vacationing kid with a smidgen of taste. Best not to stand out. Beneath the shirt, the Amulet continued to pulse unpleasantly.

He made his way into the crowd.

Little here was "magic" at all, in truth. Most of it was tourist junk - glittery paste crystals, spare ugly shirts for those who hadn't packed enough, hideous wooden or plastic things of every imaginable shape. And there were various good luck charms whose only real function was to advertise the wearer as a gullible fool - though one could have made the argument that this was a protection of a sort, given it meant any magician would dismiss them on sight. Ignorance, in addition to being bliss, could be a survival trait. Magicians tended to play for keeps.

But magicians also need pageantry. Truly, it's like they'll wither up and die if they don't get their fix now and again...a pleasant idea, that. I mused for a bit on the image of my current master curling in on himself, flesh atrophying, tendons stiffening to lock his joints in place. "Please," he begs hoarsely as the shakes set in again, "...just one...dinner party...with monkeys..."

...Where was I? Ah yes.

Now, common sense would say that the magicians, having wisely decided to keep commoners and real magic separate, would make sure that none of the latter ever came near this mass of the former. But that would involve magicians having common sense, so no.

Throughout the square, intermingled with the various open stalls were various closed tents. I didn't get close to these. They generally had a stern faced man standing in front, occasionally admitting magicians or fellow foliots in similar guises, and radiated various magical auras. A few tents, either to distract the commoners or to fleece them further, had no such supernatural guards and allowed periodic entry by select (ie, rich-looking) members of the lower classes.

The secluded nature of the tents allowed magicians to scheme and bargain privately, then make off with whatever prize they'd picked hidden under layers of plain brown paper. And the public nature of the tents' location made sure everyone knew about it, because what good is clever subterfuge if no one's around to see it?

Aside from the obvious, I mean.

Unfortunately, even magicians have some limits to their otherwise boundless follies. Nothing of real power was being sold here, and the magicians rarely carried around their more powerful possessions, which meant that the Amulet's steady bleed and warp of essence would be noticeable if I stayed in one place too long.

As long as I kept moving and kept my distance, though, it should be lost in the background noise. I began to relax. During the daytime this area would be packed tightly, but by now the worst of the press had let up and left wide gaps for me to slide through.

A few blue-costumed policemen hung out at various points in the crowd, conspicuous play-actors of the peace. Hidden almost out of sign in dark corners lurked the true face of London law, the gray uniformed Night Police. But those were considerations for humans - neither set had any way to see me or the Amulet, and even the Night Police would be no more challenge than the average imp to dispatch.

I kept my eye out for the few magicians in the crowd. Some of the more expensively dressed had imps following them around, invisible on the first plane, while others only had the glint of lenses and stink of incense to give them away. I avoided both, heading deeper into the crowd.

The boy made a show of looking about, finally slouching over to a stall to examine the various bits of colored glass being sold. He picked up one lumpy piece of yellow crystal and examined the tag. A POTENT TALISMAN, it read proudly. GUARANTEED TO REPEL ANY EVIL CREATURE. The boy set it back down and moved to the next object, a small mirror claiming it would show the presence of any ghost or spirit. Aluminum backed, naturally, and the glass itself was poor quality, creating a slight distortion.

The seller coughed. I suppose I'd been standing there too long. I moved to set it down and caught a flash of eyes over my shoulder. I turned.

A pack of four kids, three of which I caught in the act of quickly turning away and the last one studiously facing into empty space as if he'd certainly never dream of looking in my direction, it being so very boring and devoid of anything at all interesting to him. I looked through the planes, seeing nothing new. I replaced the mirror and headed off.

They tailed me, and poorly at that. This was getting just irritating. Wasn't it past their bedtimes or something? They didn't look much older than my current baby of a master.

I couldn't think what they wanted. I certainly didn't look rich enough to bother trying to mug. My clothes were plain and the only thing of value I had on me was the Amulet, whose chain I had made sure was hidden well under the shirt's collar. And if this was some sort of gang territory issue - well, again, weren't they a bit young to be involved in that nonsense? Besides, this was clearly a tourist zone.

I made my way around the square, pausing at various attractions I guessed might amuse children. They ignored the candyfloss line, as well as various stalls of toy junk. They were starting to close in a bit, in fact, so I left off and focused on moving through the crowd faster.

If it came to it, I could probably outrun them, even restricting myself to human speeds. I clearly had more experience moving through crowds by now and as an individual had a natural advantage over a group trying to follow me through the same gaps. But running would attract the attention, and that I didn't want. The police would be suspicious, and getting checked over for shoplifting would reveal the Amulet in short order.

I circled the square twice over. The kids fell behind a few times, but remained stubbornly insistent on following me, and there wasn't enough space to lose them completely. It was beginning to get rather bothersome.

I could duck out and switch forms, but I was quite sick of the place already. The imps seemed less thick in the area around than before and there was enough ambient aura that I probably didn't need to stay in the square itself to hide. I made my way around yet again, and when I had the crowd between me and them again I sprinted down the steps into the subway, through the tunnel and up the opposite entrance. I didn't wait to see if that had lost them. As I said, looking back slows you down. Instead I kept going down the street, into a series of alleys, until I was certain they couldn't have followed.

The Amulet still pulsed on my chest, and I kept walking, wishing I could chuck it. But to do that would be to deliberately fail my task, and therefore possibly the last thing I'd ever do. I'd agreed to the terms when I was released from the circle, and they were what bound me to this world.

I headed down the road. The building next to me had mirrored glass, and the boy turned to look at his reflection. He was slouching, looking tired and miserable, his shoulders hunched forward. He straightened now, lifting his head up and squaring his shoulders. He faced the mirror, cocked his head and mouthed hello. We walked along the sidewalk, turning a corner and then another.

I realized I had almost circled the block. Too tired, I wasn't thinking straight. I headed across the street and into an alley again, making my way for one of the drier doorways. I sat back. There didn't seem to be any imps nearby to give me away, and I needed a rest. I wove a concealment spell over me for safety - not my best work, but it'd do for now.

I heard the occasional set of footsteps approaching and then moving off, humans going about various human business, whatever those were these days. I admit, I don't always keep up. Most of my time is spent on the things that don't change. Case in point, this entire sorry affair. Magicians have spent most of their history stealing from each other when they can and destroying things when they couldn't, occasionally doing some straight-up backstabbing for variety.

I suspected my current master was someone's patsy, as it happened, especially now that I'd seen just how much of a reaction the theft had made. He might not even know what it was he'd stolen - he'd referred to it as a "Samarkand Amulet" once, which I had thought was a bit odd, and had gone on to give a rather poor description of the thing, presumably for my edification. Not too bright, it seemed. And now he'd angered this Lovelace and, by extension, both Faquarl and Jabor.

Well, at least I wouldn't have to worry about being summoned again. I'd hand over the Amulet at dawn and he'd be lunchmeat for Jabor a few hours later. Shame I likely wouldn't get my revenge personally, but that's how it goes sometimes...

I realized the most recent footsteps belonged to several pairs of feet. Huh. I listened. They seemed to be getting closer.

I glanced over my concealment. As I said, it was a bit shaky, but that was on the higher planes. As far as humans were concerned, the spell covered me perfectly, and would continue to hold as long as I didn't damage it by moving about.

From my hiding place I watched curiously as the four children made their way into the alley. They really didn't know when to give up.

There were three boys, one girl. They honestly weren't dressed much differently than what I'd been wearing, though their clothing looked thicker. They all wore leather jackets that they probably thought were intimidating, but they looked all of twelve, and the overall effect was that of a ferociously yapping puppy - you just wanted to kick them.

Though these particular puppies were being quiet, as it happened. They made their way down the alley without any chatter. I watched them approach on all the planes - can't be too careful, after all. Nothing but ordinary children. I waited patiently for them to move past.

"Now," said the girl.

Two of the boys lunged at me, breaking apart the concealment at their touch. I was bundled roughly to my feet, one boy at either arm, each doing their best to push it behind my back.

I was starting to lose my temper. The last few hours had been bad enough without being manhandled by preteens. I could have simply fried them outright with an inferno and been done with it, but I was tired and jumping straight to spells would probably just bring new problems down on me.

"What do you want?" I said. "I haven't got anything."

"I want that necklace," the girl said. She sounded oddly self-certain, and I revised my estimate somewhat upward - perhaps around thirteen.

"I don't know what you mean." Not really the wittiest comeback, I admit.

"I can see the chain."

I glanced down. My shirt had been pulled to the side by one of the boys, exposing the gold chain. "Oh." I considered. "I'm rather attached to it. I don't suppose we could discuss this like reasoning creatures?"

"John, get the necklace off it," she said. The third boy stepped up.

I had had enough. There's something particularly galling about being bossed around by those weaker than you. The two boys found themselves trying to hold onto the leathery forelimbs of a ten foot crocodile. I smacked one backward with my tail as I snapped at the third whose arm was still reaching toward where my neck had been a second ago, sinking my teeth into the flesh.

Imagine, if you will, walking along and finding a fallen log in your path. Reaching out to push it away, your fingers touch not wood but something soft and foul that gives beneath your touch, and as the thing rolls aside you see a mass of lumps and lines amid the brown and black rot you almost recognize as a face.

Now imagine that, but in your mouth.

All in all I think I responded rather well.

I released my hold, shifting into the form of a small fox, which landed on the pavement and with a skitter of claws shot off into the darkness.

Whatever they were, I wanted nothing to do with it.


End file.
